21 October in Australian history

1800 Where there's a fat sheep there's a fair wether....the good ship Buffalo toddled off to England from Oz with 6 sample Merino fleeces from John Macarthur...er, Mrs Macarthur who did all the hard yakka.

1818 Michael Howe went a' bushranging, changed his title from convict to "Lieutenant Governor of the woods" and ended up in a sticky mess; being shot by Private William Pugh and convict Thomas Worrall will do that, even on the banks of the Shannon River, Tasmania.

1886 - George Chaffey signed a mad-arse agreement with the Victorian Govt to knock together an irrigation settlement at Mildura.

1890 - Proclamation Day on 21 October 1890 was the real beginning of self-government in Western Australia. Proclamation Day was celebrated throughout the Colony; streets were lined with decorations, and events including sports, picnics and, in Perth itself, a 'Monster Tea'. At night fireworks and balls were staged. For many years after 1890 a public holiday known as Proclamation Day was celebrated on 21 October each year and in recent years ceremonies have been arranged on 21 October to commemorate the establishment of the State's Constitution.

1915 -  Vera Deakin, daughter of former PM Alfred Deakin, established Australia's Red Cross Missing and Wounded Enquiry Bureau in Cairo.

1940 Pastor Doug Nicholls made a basic plea for Indigenous Peoples to be treated as equals.

Townsville Daily Bulletin

1957 - Excitement, peoples! Australia's very first automatic telephone weather service made it's grand entrance in Melbourne today.

1969 - Zelda D'Aprano went to the Commonwealth Building, where a number of government offices were located, and chained herself to the entrance of the building in protest for Equal Pay.

1972 - Yippee! The Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme was officially done and dusted, opened and online.

1978 – Civilian pilot Frederick Valentich went missing in a Cessna 182 over Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1985 - Throughout October 1985 Australian unions carried out industrial bans targeting the racist regime in South Africa. These covered aviation, shipping, building, mail, telecommunications and other industries, then finished with a march and rally in Sydney outside South African Airways on October 21. Their action came after the 1985 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting(CHOGM) meeting in the Bahamas watered down sanctions against apartheid.

2000 - The newly built Melbourne Museum was officially flung open for the great unwashed masses to mass.

2002 – Two people were killed in the Monash University shooting, while five others were injured.

18 October Stuff that happened throughout Oz in history

1790 – HMS Supply returned from Batavia with more supplies for the colony. 

1847 The forced exile of Tasmanian Aboriginal People to Wybalenna on Flinders Island paved the way for the unimpeded ongoing invasion of Tasmanian Aboriginal Lands, but the so-called 'friendly mission' came to an end today when the settlement was closed  and the remaining 14 men, 23 women and 10 children were removed and taken to the former convict station at putalina/Oyster Cove.

1854 – Billy Murdoch, regarded as the finest cricket batsman of his day, was hatched in Sandhurst, Victoria.

1869 – The Lithgow Zig Zag Railway was opened. 

1907 - Several of the already-formed new Surf Lifesavings Clubs created the Surf Bathing Association of NSW. Surf Lifesaving clubs soon spread all around the Isle of Oz, with estimations that more than 800,000 people have been saved over the decades.

1909 - NSW agreed to peacefully surrender the spare 2,400 sq. kms it had kicking around in the backyard behind the shed to become the seat what the Federal Govt could shine it's trousers on... the A.C.T Australian Capital Territory, whose own capital is Canberra.

1919 – Adrian Knox was appointed as the second Chief Justice of Australia. 

1924 - From the sheep farm in Shag Valley, NZ, Frank Bell sent the first radio transmission to zip smartly around the globe to London, where it was received and replied to by Cecil Goyder.

1934 – Charles Prince of Morphettville was found guilty of fraud for the "ring in" of Redlock at the Murray Bridge Racing Club on July 28. 

Redlock Fraud

1934 -  Having popped in for a spot of tennis, the Duke of Gloucester sang for his supper by officially opening the Centenary celebrations for Victoria.

1944 - HMAS Geelong was one of four corvettes lost during the Second World War. It collided with an American merchant ship off New Guinea.

1967 -  HMAS Perth struck by return fire near Cape Lai, Vietnam, while on the United States 7th Fleet 'gunline'. This was the only occasion on which an Australian warship suffered casualties from enemy fire during the Vietnam War.

1973 - Patrick White, author, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1973 - 'The Art of Aboriginal Australia', the first major international exhibition of contemporary Australian Indigenous art, was first exhibited in the new purpose-built gallery at the Art Gallery of NSW before it was exhibited in Canada.

2021 - Following the destruction of Indigenous Heritage sites at Juukan Gorge, the Australian Senate referred an inquiry to the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia for a report by 30 September 2020. The inquiry had to be extended, and it published its final report on 18 October 2021. The final report of the inquiry found that Rio Tinto's actions were “inexcusable and an affront, not only to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) but to all Australians”. Further, the report found that the disaster could happen again because legislation designed to protect cultural heritage has often “directly contributed to damage and destruction”.

21 July Australian History National Lamington Day

 National Lamington Day 

Lord Lamington was Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901 and it was in his household, nay in his very kitchen, where (or so the Legend of Lamington says) that a cook was faced with having only stale cake to serve to unexpected guests so she got creative. Lamingtons are a sponge cake dipped in chocolate then rolled in coconut, and considering Lady Lamington was pregnant (she gave birth to a son, Victor Alexander Brisbane William Cochrane-Baillie , on 23 July 1896) I surmise it was more likely that the chef/cook made the first Lamingtons with a pregnant lady suffering food cravings in mind.

One of the first, if not the first, media mention of Lamington Cake.

1855 Today saw the Order-In-Council to change the moniker of Tassie to...Tassie. Back in the day it was titled Van Diemen's (pronounced demon's) Land and, whilst we'd all like to refer to Taswegians as demons, some of them are quite nice, civilised humans. 
And even house trained.

1898 The then-Sydney Mayor, Mathew Harris, declared that the deliciously gorgeous Queen Victoria Market Building in Sydney was open for the good ladies to sashay their way gloriously through! Party.

1991 Lake Alexander, a man-made lake in Darwin, NT named in honour of a past Lord Mayor of Darwin, Alex Fong Lim, was officially opened on this day.

1979 Sweetheart the 5.1 metre saltie (salt water crocodile) was accidentally killed whilst being transported to a safer non-human area of the Northern Territory.

1991 Today saw the misplacement of the bow from the not-so-good-ship Kirki, just off the Western Australia coast, where they also managed to misplace 7,900 tonnes of oil.

2021 Today saw the trumpeting announcement that Bris-Vegas was chosen to host the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics. Party!

Australian Princess Her Highness Princess Melikoff aka Pauline Curran 1893 - 1988

 HH Princess Melikoff was born as Pauline Curran into a Tasmanian family that benefited greatly as part-inheritors of the Tattersall's fortune.
When Pauline was old enough to do as she pleased - this was when her father had passed away and she was allegedly past her first bloom of youth *ahem* - she found herself a handsome Russian aristocrat Prince Maximilian Melikoff and put on a Royal Wedding in Hobart in 1926 where police had to halt traffic for three hours.

Again, Netflix, here's a true Royal wedding story.

Princess Melikoff established a trust fund on her death which supports marine conservation and rescues of stranded marine mammals.

Further Reading - 

Princess Melikoff

Biography

How charitable trusts impact the community

Critchley Parker ; Lost In Tasmania Searching For A New Jerusalem; Poynduk 1942

 Critchley Parker, aged only 31, trekked into the Tasmanian wilderness in an effort to find suitable land for future Jewish settlements far away from the bloodshed of Europe.

He was not Jewish himself but he was infatuated with a (married) Jewish journalist named Caroline Isaacson, and was determined to help find a permanent peaceful refuge for those fleeing the violent horrors of WW2. 

During his fateful trek near Port Davey he discovered a small pond with swans, called poynduk in the local Ninene language. Critchley hoped to name the settlement Poynduk but this was not to be.

Critchley had had TB which had left his lungs and overall health in a weakened state; the weather turned suddenly and he was caught in bucketing rain for weeks that triggered pleurisy. He had planned to light a signal fire to alert the fisherman to come pick him up but he ran out of matches, ran out of food, ran out of time.

But he never ran out of plans for the future settlement of Poynduk; he wrote in his copious notes that he wished it to be based on the "principals of racial tolerance and international brotherhood", to have universities open to students of all colours, medical facilities, schools, hydro-electric power plants. 

Critchley planned for the Tasmanian Games to be hosted at Poynduk each year; the games would celebrate not just sports but poetry, plays, weaving, music and pottery.

Alas, with his early death in the wilderness Critchley's plans for Poynduk were dashed for good.

Further reading -

“Poynduk”: the Extravagant, Impossible (and Understandable) Dreams of Critchley Parker

The King of Iceland, founder of Hobart, Jorgen Jorgensen 29 March 1780 – 20 January 1841

 Jorgen Jorgensen was talented in many ways; sailor, spy, seditionist and silly bugger.

He was present at the foundation of Hobart, witnessed the Battle of Copenhagen, arrested the Danish Governor of Iceland then declared himself the Protector of Iceland - which lasted barely 2 months before he was voted off the island and back to England.

He managed to get employed by the British Intelligence Service where he translated documents and wandered about as a spy during the Napoleonic Wars, but then ran into a little trouble where he was accused of theft and voted back to an island , Tasmania.

The Convict King is immortalised in stone relief on the beautiful Ross Bridge with his crown.

Further reading -

Jørgen Jørgensen: The Convict King